At the Border of SF: Magical Realism

Last month I wrote about crossover YA[2]-- speculative fiction written for a teen audience that adults would also enjoy. This month, I'd like to take another stroll outside of the SF genre shelves and introduce you to a close cousin: magical realism.

Magical realism is essentially mainstream fiction with a difference. Unlike urban fantasy, which uses a version of our world as a setting for fantasy (with all of fantasy's tropes and magical rules), magical realism brings an element of myth and fantasy into an otherwise mundane real-world setting and treats it as factual. The result is something as weird and startling as finding a half-burnt simurgh feather on the ground while you're out walking the dog: the wondrous becomes (sometimes uncomfortably) possible and close and real.

Argentinian author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges is widely considered the originator of this genre with his A Universal History of Infamy, in which he blends a few fanciful details and villains of fable into an otherwise factual recounting of evildoers from history. In fact, a lot of magical realism today still comes from Latin American authors (as you can see in the list below), but its appeal has definitely grown beyond its original borders. Popular authors like Toni Morrison, Audrey Niffenegger, Salman Rushdie, Alice Hoffman, Joanne Harris, and Haruki Murakami all write in the genre.

Magical realism is a great crossover point both for regular fiction readers who want to dabble their toes in fantasy and for SF readers who want to try something a bit more mainstream. (They make excellent book club choices, too.) Whether you're a mainstream fiction reader or a speculative fiction fan, you're certain to find something here that's out of your common way.